I am pretty excited to share with you today! I made my first change in the apartment. What did I do? I took out all the cabinet doors in my kitchen! Ugh, they were so difficult to deal with. They were sliding doors so I could only get to half of a cabinet at a time. Plus, they would get stuck and I had to take more time moving and fixing doors than getting dishes and ingredients out.

My fix? Curtains. Because I live in an apartment, I can’t fully renovate my kitchen (and don’t have the money to). Curtains were really the only choice I had other than leaving all the cabinets open. Lucky for me, curtains are low cost! I don’t sew very often so my mom helped me measure and decide how much fabric I needed. To hang them, I chose spring rods (also low cost) so that I could take them all the way off if I had a lot of cooking and baking and didn’t want any hassle. When I sewed, I kept the salvage on and just folded the part over enough to be able to slip it on the rod. These curtains are the first project I have completed on my own sewing machine. So proud!

BEFORE

AFTER

As you can see I left the two over the sink open. I decided I would use those two the most and didn’t want to overwhelm the kitchen with curtains. Instead I mod podged scrapbook paper onto the back to add a very subtle color and pattern. (I used my homemade mod podge)

Oh! And I added a rug! It helps break up the yellowing tile.

I hope this gives you some ideas for a simple low cost project for your home!

I recall as a young wife and mother a wise woman advised me to always have ingredients on hand to be able to throw together a quick meal for the unexpected guest. Over the years I have also learned to have a gift box full of things that could be given as gifts for that unexpected event, birthday party, hostess gift, etc. A staple in my “Gift Box” is handmade dishcloths. I love making these and people seem to love receiving something handmade.

Hand Knitted Dish Cloth Gifts

Mormor’s Dishcloth

Mormor’s Dishcloth with Center Grid

My quick-go-to pattern is what I call the Mormor’s Dishcloth Pattern. It’s a good knitting pattern for beginners. I came by this pattern from my grandma back in the ’90s. I have a photo copy of the pattern out of the August-September, 1991 “Best of Workbasket” magazine. How many of you out there have a collection of “Workbaskets?” I know my mother has a big box. The pattern is easy…

Like this:

Today is the best kind of day – a SNOW DAY! What makes this snow day even more exciting is that it wasn’t expected! Surprise! Snow days were always a students dream come true, but now that I’m a teacher and on the other side of going to school everyday a snow day is even more precious.

What am I going to do today? There is a long list – trust me! I’m going to start by trying to get caught up on my grading and get my lesson plans ready for the following week. There’s always things to do around the house. I just hope I leave myself enough time to do something fun and creative!

For those of you who know me, you know that I am a big time book lover. When I was younger, I couldn’t even leave the house without grabbing a book to go. It didn’t matter if we were going to the dentist’s office, the grocery store or a volleyball game; I always had my nose in a book.

The project I want to share with you today stems from my obsession with literature. If you are always on the go, a typical paper bookmark simply will not do. When you pick up your book and it accidentally swings open, you can’t have your bookmark flying out too! I hate losing my place in a book, so I found a solution to this problem: making my own bookmark! (First saw the idea for this project on pinterest, but this is the blog it originally came from.)

For this simple project you will need ribbon to fit the size of your book, a button of your choice, and a pony-tail holder that you don’t mind giving up.

You will first need to cut your ribbon to the desired length. I am kind of an “eye-baller”, so I just wrapped my ribbon around the outside of my book and cut it, leaving about an inch between the ends.

Next, wrap one end of the ribbon through the pony-tail holder and pin it in place.

Now sew along the edge of the ribbon to secure the loop around the pony-tail holder. Make sure to reinforce the beginning and end by reverse stitching.

Next you will need to decide where to place your button.Once again I eye-ball where I want my button by wrapping the ribbon around the book. Then I looked where the pony-tail holder would naturally hit the book mark without slack, but then I place the button about above that mark. Therefore, the pony-tail will be pulled tight against the book at the place where the button is sewn.

Now sew the button onto the ribbon at the desired location.

Next, I gathered the ribbon a little bit at the place where the button is sewn so that the location of the button looks more natural.

Then wrap the ribbon around the book one more time securing the pony-tail holder around the button, and you’ve officially made your very own bookmark that will not slip out of your book while you’re on the go!

The most important thing that I learned from making this bookmark is that one-size does not fit all. Obviously some books will be too big or too small to use with this bookmark. However, with how easy this bookmark is to make, it wouldn’t be hard to whip one up to fit your favorite book.

Everyone has a signature. Not only the way they sign their name but also their personal style. As soon as our parents let us dress ourselves we begin to experiment with our appearance. Our parents might even let us decorate our bedroom. When I was in 4th grade, I had my room painted a bright sunshine yellow. My mother stenciled a white picket fence along one wall. Intertwined in the posts were tulips, lady bugs, and butterflies. My signature decorating wise hasn’t changed all that much. Well, I don’t want a fence on every wall but I still like that cottage, garden feel.

Nathan and I have had our apartment for a month now. We have lived together for just over two weeks, wow, we are actually married!

Ok so our apartment isn’t the worst, but it isn’t the most ideal either. I just thank God for putting a roof over our heads. The moment I first saw our apartment I thought “How am I going to live here?” Courtney had a great comment that summed up how it looks “dormy”. But as soon as our furniture and belongings were moved in, it already felt like more of a home. Now that we are almost settled in, I am ready to start putting our signature on it. I might not be able to repaint or change out flooring, but I can do a lot with staging.

I am hoping to share with you how I adapt our apartment to Nathan and my style as we continue to get used to married life. Be ready for the little changes to come!

I found this recipe in a casserole cookbook magazine that I found in my stocking from Santa. I have also located it online here at Taste of Home.

Casseroles are really so nice when you’ve got a busy schedule and just need something to throw together quickly. You’ll notice this recipe made it onto my menu two weeks in a row – last week and this week! I made it once and had enough ingredients to turn it into a frozen meal for the following week.

It’s a tasty meal and provides enough leftovers for lunch the next day, but it won’t be sitting in our fridge forever – which is sometimes the case with casserole dishes. It’s a yummy dish and perfectly portioned for two!

He says: Not your everyday casserole – I liked it.

She says: I liked the creaminess from the cream cheese and the green chiles added a unique flavor.

Have you ever bought yarn for a project for yourself and then turn around and give it to someone else instead? This is what happened to me during the holidays. I had taken inventory of my sock drawer and decided that some of my ready-made socks were nearing the end of their lives. Oh darn – I need more socks to replace them and I want them hand-knitted. High on my list was brown socks. I have a couple of brown pants that I always wear with basic, no thrill brown socks. I was excited for my next yarn shopping adventure.

Ok, I admit, I am not like my husband with a mission in mind when I go shopping. I do not walk in the store, seek out the “sock” yarn, find what I want, buy it and I’m on my way. No, during my yarn shopping trip I looked through the entire yarn department touching, feeling and petting several of the skeins as I passed through the isles. I dreamed up all the projects I could knit or crochet with this lovely yarn. “Earth to Sonya, earth to Sonya” – oh ya, I was shopping for sock yarn. I cleared my head and started to focus on my mission. I reached my destination and was SOooo…disappointed in the small selection. Yep, when you bop into a box store you can’t expect much and my town doesn’t have a yarn shop. I made my selection – not brown – they didn’t have brown but I am partial to self-patterning yarn so Clover Colors it was by Patons. As you can see it has greens, reds, blues and a touch…a hint…a scant…ok…no brown. Hey, give me credit I searched the entire yarn department.

During our family Christmas we somehow began talking about hand-knitted socks. Alex, my oldest daughter, piped in and said, “hey, you have only made me one pair of socks and some slippers. I want another pair.” To the studio I marched and pulled out the “not so brown” sock yarn and asked if she would like a pair made out of the yarn. It was a YES! She selected a pattern and now my socks were hers. I love the way they turned out. I had made the pattern before – oh funny – they were made with a brown tweed. I disliked the mock-cable which the pattern called for so I changed it to a true cable. Hey, I knit like I cook. If I don’t like the recipe, I change it. I know there is more like me out there. Back to the pattern – I do really like the true cable. I also like the picot edging. It adds a nice finishing touch to the top. What do you think?

When I was looking for gifts to make for my family this Christmas, I came across this idea to make a monogram on canvas using embroidery thread. I thought the 3D look would be pretty cool, but I never realized how long it would take me to make three of them!

This one is the first I made. Therefore, many mistakes were made because it was kind of an experiment. However, now I have a pretty good idea of how to complete this craft without too many mistakes!

I started with canvas, embroidery thread, tape, white thread, and rope. I first played with the rope to decide what shape my letters should take. Then I taped the rope down to the canvas in the desired shape. After the rope is taped down, I took the white thread and tied down the rope about every couple inches or as needed to keep the shape. Then I started embroidering, keeping my stitches as close together as I could in order to fully cover the rope. After covering a little bit of the rope, I went back to the end or start point to try and cover the frayed edge. Then I kept going around the rope until it was all finished!

Word to the wise – don’t poke unnecessary holes in the canvas because you will still be able to see them when you are all done. That is the biggest lesson that I learned when making the first monogram. Originally, I was using pins instead of tape to hold the rope while I used the white thread to secure the rope, but then I changed the shape of my letter, which uncovered the holes I made with the pins.

I made a “J” and a “P” monogram as well, but my favorite was the “J” for my older sister and her husband because it had a really cute curl at the bottom of the letter. It was also made with this variegated brown thread which is going to look so nice in their home where they have been decorating with a lot of those neutral colors and a western twist to a lot of their decor.

Overall, each monogram probably took me 5 or more hours to complete because the embroidery was slow going. I was using the entire length of embroidery thread each time, so that was a lot of thread to pull through each stitch I made. And with a long length of thread comes the problem of it becoming tangled, which happened quite often. However, I enjoyed making them for my family and can’t wait to see how they display them in their homes.

What has been your latest craft project? Share below! We’d love to hear what you’ve been working on!